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Tuesday, May 29, 2012

About 65-70% of the parents do not love all their children equally much

It's a social taboo, parents can't admit to loving their children unequally. It doesn't matter if the parents who are aware of it still treat their children as equals, there is still a great shame connected to it. The way parents proclaim their equal love for all their children is among the greatest lies parents tell.

I don't love my own children equally, there is a difference between them. Personally I think it's connected to the traumatic birth of my youngest and the mayhem that followed. I was disconnected from him since he was at another part of the hospital and it took a while to bond with him afterwards. It's also due to their personalities, our oldest son is more like me and we are "on level" most of the time, while there is more conflict with our youngest. It doesn't mean that I don't love one of them, only that the love I feel for him is different. It doesn't mean that I treat them unequally, though I deal with them differently them depending on their personality.

My local news paper have a quiz about it today and this far 30% of the answerers admit to unequal love. That number stands in contrast to Katherine Conger's 2005 study where 65% of the mothers and 70% of the fathers loved unequally. There are other studies and opinions of course, but many of them show the same pattern, many parents do have favourites.

There is a huge difference between loving your children unequally and treating your children unequally, but people seem to think of them as one and the same. I think it would be better if people could talk about it openly. It could help the children who are mistreated (or even unloved) by their parents.